


The (Not So) Still Of The Night

by Sandyclaws68



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bonding is a never ending thing, Everyone Has Issues, Family Feels, Female Pidge | Katie Holt, Gen, Hinted Shidge and Klance, Homesickness, It's all part of the bonding process, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Team Bonding, Team as Family, if you blink you might miss it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-17 13:37:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8146006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandyclaws68/pseuds/Sandyclaws68
Summary: A few nights in such close quarters taught all of them a lot of things about their team mates.





	

“Do I even want to know what happened here?” Coran asked, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose before he sighed.

All five Paladins looked around at the chaos of water, floating cushions, bedclothes and pillows that the corridor had become. Lance, as expected, was the first one to open his mouth, no doubt to make a smart-mouthed comment, but all that emerged was a pained grunt when Keith elbowed him in the ribs. Pidge and Hunk both snickered, so as usual it was left to Shiro to make some sort of attempt at explaining.

“Honestly, Coran? We don't know what happened either.” He shrugged. “I woke up this morning to six inches of water on the floor of my room, and that's about all I can tell you.” He looked at the other four, who all nodded in agreement. Pidge pulled out one of her favorite handheld devices and a pop-up schematic of the castle appeared, changing as she zoomed in on the area they currently occupied.

“Hn,” she grunted, swiping a finger through the image and making it shift to another area. “I don't see anything physically wrong – no leaky pipes or anything – so I'd guess that something's wrong with the castle's water distribution systems.” She closed the schematic and stuffed the handheld back in her pocket. “It might take some time to trace the problem.”

“Where are we supposed to sleep in the meantime?” Hunk asked, looking around once again at the flood. “Because I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but the water has gotten deeper while we've been here talking.”

They all looked surprised, even Coran, and Shiro gave a decisive nod. “Right. We'll work out where later, but for now grab whatever you need for a few nights away from your quarters, then get to the control room. Coran?”

The Altean seemed to snap out of a trance. “Hmmm?”

“Make sure the princess knows what's happening. I'd hate to spring this on her out of nowhere.” He smiled at the members of his team. “If all else fails we can always sleep in our Lions.”

****~**~**~**~**~****

The morning's calamity was quickly pushed out of all of their minds by an exhausting day. Hours of training, both as a team and individually, regular maintenance work, and lastly a two hour class on diplomacy and decorum with Allura left all five Paladins in near comatose states. It was Keith nearly falling asleep in his plate at dinner that reminded everyone of their dilemma.

But when Coran showed them to their temporary sleeping quarters the reception was probably not what he had been expecting.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Hunk said, looking around the small room in shock.

“You have got to be _fucking_ kidding me!” Pidge exclaimed, dropping her bundle of clothes with a _clang_ that suggested tools, computer hardware, and maybe a drone or two were concealed within.

“Guys,” Shiro put in, doing his best to smooth things over despite his own dismay at the situation.

Keith glance at their commander. “You can't be all right with this.”

The room was. . . Well, maybe not tiny, but it definitely had pretensions in that direction. It was about the size of one and a half of their regular bedrooms, but it felt smaller due to the countertop work table that ran along three of the walls. The lack of lighting didn't help much either, and the pile of bedding stacked next to the door made it worse. All five of them looked around, clearly dismayed.

“Right,” Lance said, grabbing a blanket and pillow off the top of the pile. “I'm sleeping in the lounge.”

“Sorry, my young friend, but that is not an option,” Coran replied, pushing through the paladins to stand in the room's center. “The lounge is a victim of this water problem as well. This -” He gestured around the confined space. “ - was the best we could do on such short notice.”

The door slid shut with a soft _whoosh_ after Coran left, leaving the quintet behind in varying states of surprise and disgust. It was Pidge who finally broke the silence.

“I am not sleeping next to Lance. No way. He probably gets perverted and handsy in his sleep.”

“HEY!”

“Oh, so now you're offended at your supposed 'ladies man' status?” Keith interjected with a smirk.

“No, I'm offended at the idea that I'd mess with a team mate, lady or not,” Lance replied, puffed up with anger.

“I'm a lady, dammit!”

With a sigh Shiro started to rub his temples, tempted to leave the room and let the argument play itself out. But for the first time in he didn't know how long he actually felt tired and the thought of sleep didn't frighten him. So he stepped forward into the triangle of Keith, Pidge, and Lance, forcing them apart. “Enough!” he barked out, then waited for everyone's attention. “I don't like this any better than you all do, but it's only for a couple of nights, so I suggest we all behave like mature people and deal with it!” He stomped to the corner and grabbed the top layer of bedding, tossing it to Keith. “You at that end, then Lance, Hunk, Pidge, and me.” He put his hands on his hips and glared when they all just stood there, dumbfounded. “MOVE!”

****~**~**~**~**~****

A few nights in such close quarters taught all of them a lot of things about their team mates.

Lance didn't erupt out of a nightmare screaming, but his quiet sobs were more than enough to wake his companions. The first one who responded was, oddly enough, Keith, who gently carded his fingers through Lance's hair and made comforting sounds. When that didn't work he wrapped the taller man up in his arms and held him close while Hunk rubbed circles in his back.

“It's okay, buddy,” Hunk whispered, glancing over his shoulder to see Pidge and Shiro watching him intently. “I know you miss them. Shhhhh.”

A few words managed to make themselves understood through the sobbing, including _sister_ and _Quinceañera_. Keith looked at Hunk over the top of Lance's head. “What is he talking about?”

“It's a special celebration in Hispanic cultures,” Hunk explained. “For a daughter's fifteenth birthday.” He looked impossibly sad. “This must be that birthday for one of his younger sisters.”

“No wonder he's upset,” Shiro whispered. “I know he was always close to his family, so to miss something important like that. . .”

Pidge was the only one of the group who hadn't said anything, but the look on her face was an interesting combination of mournful and determined. She sat up, pushed her hair out of her eyes, then climbed over Hunk and, with a few well-placed elbows, made room for herself between the Blue and Yellow Paladins. She curled up against Lance's back, snaking her arms around his waist until her fingers caught in the fabric of Keith's t-shirt, tying them together in a three-way embrace.

Hunk looked like he wanted to say something for a long moment, but then he just sighed and adjusted his own body to spoon against Pidge's. One long arm reached far enough to rest a hand against Keith's shoulder.

Shiro was the last to add himself to the comforting pile, pressing his forehead to Hunk's broad back and relaxing, letting his breathing synchronize with the others.

****~**~**~**~**~****

Hunk didn't suffer from insomnia to the same degree that some of the others did, but when he had trouble sleeping everybody knew about it.

The soft clacking of computer keys woke Pidge out of a restless sleep and she rolled over to be confronted with an empty space between her bedroll and Lance's. One corner of the otherwise dark room was filled with a familiar, blue-ish light, and when she sat up she saw Hunk sitting against the wall, one of the Altean data units on his lap. He was focused on the screen in front of him, but she could tell how tense he was by the set of his shoulders.

“Can't sleep?” she asked in a whisper, causing Hunk to start.

He nodded. “Yeah. Not sure why though.”

“Just one of those things, I'm sure,” Pidge replied as she rose to her feet and crossed the small space, sliding down the wall until she was nestled against her large friend's side.

“I guess,” Hunk said with a sigh. “Sometimes it's like. . . I don't know. My brain won't shut off, no matter what. Like it's stuck on a loop, and I can't break out of it.”

“What's it looping on?”

Both of them jumped, peering into the darkness. The blue light given off by the data screen made Keith's eyes seem almost purple as he came closer. He sat next to Pidge and wrapped an arm around her waist, face pressed into the warm skin of her neck, apparently ready to ignore any response to his question.

“What's it looping on?” Pidge repeated the Red Paladin's question.

“Home,” Hunk barely breathed out. “It's stuck on home. I was thinking about how my brother and I used to get in these wrestling matches, and how mad Mom would get. We bumped against a shelf once and broke her favorite vase. I thought we were dead for sure.” he pushed the data unit away but left it open so they at least had some light.

“You know that she pretty much raised me and my brother on her own right?” Both Pidge and Keith nodded, Keith with his face still buried in their youngest team mate's neck. “My dad was a career Navy man and not home that much. And usually when he came home it was to tell us we were moving to a new station.”

“That's better than not knowing him at all.” Keith's words were muffled by Pidge's hair. Then he went on, barely loud enough to be heard. “Sometimes I envy Lance and that huge damned family of his.”

“I could always introduce you to Every. Last. One of them.”

Three heads turned towards the new voice as Lance slid off his bedroll and crawled to the corner, apparently too lazy to stand. He settled against Hunk's opposite side from Pidge and Keith. “Yeah, I would love to introduce you guys to the entire family. I know my abuela would love it: more people to cook for.” His head dropped to Hunk's shoulder. “We could spend lazy days on my uncle's boat, fishing the Intercoastal, eat lunch at my favorite seafood shack in Placida, go shelling at Boca Grande Beach, maybe take a drive down to Sanibel. . .” His voice trailed off and a faint sniffle was heard. “Damn, now _I'm_ homesick!” he choked out.

Pidge shifted until she was sitting in Hunk's lap, facing Lance. “You're always homesick, dumbass,” she whispered with genuine affection, taking one of his hands in both of hers.

“You guys are like a self-fulfiling prophecy; in trying to comfort one sufferer you all end up coming down with it.” Shiro stepped out of the shadows on the other side of the room and sat beside Keith. “And you're keeping everybody awake,” he concluded with a yawn.

****~**~**~**~**~****

Keith tended to keep very much to himself, and that included his bouts of sleeplessness. Usually when confronted with such he'd work himself to exhaustion on the training deck, even, on one memorable occasion, falling asleep there when he simply couldn't stand any longer. Coran had more than a few stories of finding the exhausted Red Paladin slumped and snoring with a deactivated battle drone standing over him.

But on the third night of their water-enforced closeness the flooded training deck wasn't an option. Unable to disappear and keep whatever issues he had to himself Keith simply laid on his bedroll, staring at the ceiling. What he wasn't aware of doing, however, was the repetitive tapping of the fingers on his right hand where it rested between himself and the warm body next to his.

He wasn't aware of it, that is, until another hand pressed down on the restless fingers and a voice whispered “Knock it off”. He turned his head and met Lance's eyes, looking oddly green in the dim light of the room's control panel. He raised an eyebrow.

“You're twitching,” Lance whispered, taking his hand off of Keith's before he sat up. “I know you don't like to talk, but I'll listen if you need someone to.”

Keith shook his head. “No, I. . . I'd rather not wake anyone else up.” He looked away. “I'm fine.”

“No, you're not, and -”

“And it's already too late,” another voice broke in. “We're awake. At least I am, and judging by the elbow that has been repeatedly poking me in the ribs for the last ten minutes so is Pidge.”

“Stuff it. Sir.”

Lance laughed softly and winked at Keith. “Shall we go for the set?” he asked, and when Keith nodded he whispered “Hunk?”.

“Yeah, yeah, I'm awake.”

“So, there you have it,” Lance said as he turned back to look at Keith. “Everybody is already awake, so your only excuse for not talking is if you don't want to.”

“But it might help,” Pidge put in, the walking disaster of her bedhead becoming visible as she leaned on Hunk's chest. She gestured to the Blue and Yellow Paladins. “The last two nights you had to listen as these two whined about whatever was bothering them, so it's only fair that they return the favor.”

“Hey! I wasn't whining?” Lance protested.

“Crying, then.”

“Pidge,” Shiro put in, using his command voice. She immediately subsided, but not without a wicked grin for Lance, who stuck his tongue out in return. With a sigh Shiro gave them up as a lost cause (he knew when to pick his battles) and shifted on his bedroll until he could look squarely at Keith. “I think the point has already been made, but I'll say it again: you don't have to talk, but we're all here to listen if you want to.”

Only silence greeted Shiro's words, and it went on for so long that the others pretty much all figured that Keith wouldn't talk. But then there heard a shaky, in-drawn breath. “I was just wondering what my mother would think if she saw me now,” he whispered. “You guys know that my father was never around, right? Well, my mom. . . she, um. . . She couldn't cope with everything and turned to drugs as some sort of escape. I was taken out of her custody and placed in foster care when I was seven. The last time I saw her I was fourteen, at a hearing to determine if she would get me back.”

“What happened?” Hunk asked, his soft voice barely audible.

“She had gotten clean, you know?” Keith replied, and his voice sounded rougher. “At least that's what her lawyer claimed. And it seemed to be true, but on the day the judge was going to announce her decision my mother came into court high. And I mean obviously high. The judge wasted no time in dismissing the request and ordering my mother into a mandated rehab program. The next thing I knew she flew across the room and physically attacked my foster mother and guardian ad litem. And as the bailiffs were dragging her away she spat at my feet and screamed that I'd never amount to anything.”

The stunned silence when he finished was broken by Pidge. “Shit!” she drawled out. “No wonder you have abandonment issues!”

“PIDGE!” Hunk, Lance, and Shiro all yelped. Keith, in contrast, just laughed.

“She's absolutely right, though,” he said. “It took me some time to figure it out, but eventually it was as plain as day. Even when you tried, Shiro, as my Big Brother, I never really let you in. Why do you think that was?”

Shiro looked uncomfortable. “I. . . I never really thought about it, to be honest.” he sighed. “And now I feel like I let you down all those years ago.”

“You didn't,” Keith replied, giving his head an emphatic shake. “And even if you did you weren't the first, so don't beat yourself up. No matter what I could never hate you.”

Lance threw himself onto Keith then, lying with his head in the other Paladin's lap. “What about me, huh?” he asked with a silly grin.

“You I can hate without even trying,” Keith scoffed. But his smile was fond as he rubbed the Blue Paladin's head, mussing up his hair.

****~**~**~**~**~****

In all the years since they had become a team Pidge and Shiro had been engaged in an unofficial competition to see who could endure more sleepless nights. Lance claimed that Shiro had the edge, while Hunk favored Pidge. In Keith's mind it was all a tie, because the pair of them were equally ridiculous on the subject.

So it came as no surprise when he drifted awake on their fourth night in what he called the sleeping closet that the room felt emptier than it should have. He sat up and immediately glanced to his right; the space on Hunk's other side was not occupied by the youngest and eldest Paladins. With no hesitation he shook Lance awake.

“Wha?! Whazzit?!” In his startled flailing one of Lance's arms lashed out and hit Hunk in the stomach. The Yellow Paladin woke with a pained grunt.

“What the _quiznack_ , Lance?”

“Ask Keith.”

The pair of them both turned toward the room's third occupant, and Keith simply inclined his head toward the two empty bedrolls. “Guess.”

Lance looked and then let out a sigh, covering his eyes with one hand. “Ugh. Should we split up to look for them?”

Hunk looked lost in thought for a moment, then he shook his head. “No need; they're together. In the pod hangar.”

The other two didn't question how he knew. Hunk's connection to his Lion and to the other Paladins had always been more emotionally based than the rest of them, so in a situation like this he had a better sense of what was what. They all rose to their feet and left the room, following the quickest path to their destination and trying to ignore the cold floor on their bare feet.

Inside the hangar the only light came from the maintenance units that were always connected to the pods when they weren't in use, but that faint, turquoise glow was more than enough. Shiro sat underneath the wing of a pod, eyes blank and his prosthetic hand lit up an eerie, ominous purple. Pidge was on her knees a few feet from him, just out of his reach, and was talking to him so softly that the others couldn't make out the words. It was, unfortunately, a familiar tableau.

Keith, Lance, and Hunk all approached slowly, not speaking. They knew that in whatever head space Shiro had retreated to a voice other than Pidge's would startle him, with potentially disastrous consequences. When they were close enough they all dropped to sit on the floor, listening as Pidge spoke whatever words came to her mind; stories of their adventures and battles, mentions of her father and brother, silly jokes, and all manner of comforting nonsense. But throughout the monologue she made a point of addressing him as Takashi, a privilege that only she was allowed.

No one could tell how much time had passed before Shiro's eyes closed for a long moment. His breathing was shaky, but when he blinked slowly several times the life was back in his eyes and the purple light around his right hand was fading. He spared barely a glance for the huddled trio of Lance, Keith, and Hunk, before turning his head to where Pidge knelt.

“Katie,” he whispered.

She sighed and fell forward onto her hands, shoulders shaking with silent sobs. Then she crawled forward and wrapped her arms around Shiro's shoulders, pressing her face against his neck. With no hesitation he caught her up against him, shifting her small form so that she was seated sideways in his lap. The pair stayed like that, simply breathing against each other, until Keith shifted where he sat and they both looked up.

“We, uh -” Keith's voice broke. “We should get back to our little closet,” he said before standing up. He reached out a hand to pull Lance to his feet, watching as Shiro stood, still cradling Pidge. As a group they made their way back to their temporary sleeping quarters, no one mentioning whatever it was that had driven Shiro to try and isolate himself, and Pidge to follow and bring him back.

They didn't need to know in order to try and change it, after all.

****~**~**~**~**~****

The next morning Allura and Coran found the Paladins of Voltron in a heap on the bedding, all five curled up and cuddled against each other. They quickly backed out of the small storage room, leaving the quintet to get a few more ticks of sleep.

“I hope you're satisfied now, Coran,” Allura said as they walked side-by-side down the corridor. “I am not fixing that water system one more time.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm rather fond of the idea that Lance is Hispanic, and like a few other fics have done I placed his home in Florida. And because I'm partial I made it the Southwest coast, in the area where I used to live. :D


End file.
